Who's Your Daddy? (28 page)

“Hmm, don’t tell me that,” he growled, pausing for another kiss. “Or I’ll just try to talk you into your bed again.”

“And I’d let you, but aren’t you on duty tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

“Then you’d better get some sleep.” I stood up on my toes to kiss him, and then, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, let him go.

“Good night,” he whispered.

“Good night. And thanks.”

“Any time.”

With one last look and a quick kiss on the cheek, he was gone, and I was alone in the empty apartment. On autopilot, I went back into the bedroom. Lying on my bed, I stared up at the ceiling. The sheets had cooled, and we’d both long since come back to earth, but the air still vibrated with every sound we’d made and the orgasms we’d had.

Being in his arms tonight, something had been different, and it took until now—once I was no longer in his arms—to figure it out. He made me feel safe. It wasn’t that I needed a man to protect me or shelter me, but I at least needed to know he was on my side.

Whenever my ex-husband had held onto me, it was suffocating. When Don—or Isaac, for that matter—held me, I could breathe. They reassured me we could get through this situation even though I knew they were as stressed and worried as I was. From day one, they’d been nothing but supportive.

Thinking about it all now, I realized how easily I always lost my inhibitions when I was in bed with them, and it was because I wasn’t afraid to. I trusted them on every level. They genuinely cared for me. I could be
me
and not be a nervous wreck around them.

And tonight? No one had ever gone to bat for me like that. Paul would have quietly listened to my parents chastise me, assuming he didn’t chime in and let me know they had a point. On the ride home, he would have either sided with them or given me hell for being upset about the way they treated me when I hadn’t stood up to them.

I’d never wanted or expected anyone to fight my battles, but no one had ever become so enraged on my behalf, as if everything my parents had said had been a personal insult to Don.

My woman?

He hadn’t struck me as possessive or territorial. Not in a negative way, anyway. Protective, maybe. Whatever the case, did it mean something? In anger, had he lifted a veil beneath which I wasn’t supposed to see?

A knot formed in my gut, tightening a few inches above the still-tiny baby that bound the three of us together. I’d thought being with Don and Isaac like this would make things easier until I could get back into dating. This was just making things worse, though.

The fact was, I didn’t want to date anyone else now. It just made sense, the three of us, even though this couldn’t make sense. They had their relationship. What they had with me was friendship with benefits. Friendship with benefits and a baby, as it were.

But why, then, did it have to feel like so much more? It wasn’t like I was getting starry-eyed because one of them was the father of my child. With any other man, I’d probably have resented him for the fact that we were now inextricably tied to each other for at least two decades.

Not these two. In the last few weeks, my feelings for them had only gotten stronger. My feelings that had, I realized, been there much longer than I thought. It had never occurred to me how intimate my friendship was with them until we became physically intimate. Since they’d always been off the menu, I’d let my hair down around them. I’d let my guard down. When we crossed the physical lines, it hadn’t triggered a new set of emotions, it just made the existing ones impossible to deny.

I loved them. Both of them. I was in love with Don. I was in love with Isaac. As individuals, as a pair.

I exhaled hard and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands.

Falling in love wasn’t supposed to hurt like this. I wasn’t supposed to ache for not one but two men who I couldn’t have.

It did. I did.

Chapter Twenty

Donovan

My woman.

I clung to the steering wheel as Carmen’s apartment faded in the rearview and the ghost of my own voice sent another shiver down my spine. The fierce protectiveness that had brought those words to my tongue had come out in anger, but was that all it was? Where did being protective of my best friend and the mother of my child or stepchild end? At what point did it become stepping over a line and getting territorial?

It didn’t matter. I had stepped over that line. Carmen wasn’t my possession, my territory, anything of the sort, but she was…

I flinched.

My woman.

The words had slipped almost unnoticed off my lips when they were spoken, but now, after being in her bed, it was like the feverish sex had solidified what I’d said. Like I’d known how I felt about her, but after we’d made love—and there was no denying that was exactly what we’d done—I couldn’t pretend I was anything less than in love with her.

Nor could I shake the guilt that I had just betrayed Isaac in the deepest possible way.

All the way home, I was a nervous wreck. One minute, I held the steering wheel as tight as I could to keep my hands from shaking. The next, I drummed my fingers on the console. Moments later, I white-knuckled the wheel and clenched my teeth so hard it hurt. Guilt gnawed at me from the inside out.

I could have sworn the road between Carmen’s place and mine was longer, but before I knew it, I’d reached the turn that would take me into the cul de sac where Isaac waited for me. Gritting my teeth, I kept going, right past the turnoff. Just a few more minutes, that was all I needed. Circle the block once, twice, a half dozen times. Whatever it took to get my head around this. Or at least try to.

I was angry with myself, and when I was angry with anyone, I stayed the hell away from everyone. I’d walked out on plenty of arguments with Isaac, which frustrated him to no end. He always thought I was just avoiding the issue, but it wasn’t that. I wasn’t afraid of uncomfortable conversations or difficult subjects or anything like that. What I was afraid of was my own frustration. Of those moments when the stress—whether I was angry or simply buckling under the weight of the world—became too much, and I could feel the last threads fraying before I’d lose my temper.

I was
so afraid
of turning into my dad.

Whether he was angry with me or just stressed about something, my father could so easily shift from being loud and angry to downright, uncontrollably
violent
. I would never raise a hand to Ryan or Isaac. I wasn’t a violent person, but in moments of blind fury, when emotions got the best of me and I lost control, I’d heard my father’s words come out of my mouth. And not just his words. It was no mystery why I’d learned, at a very young age, the fine art of seamlessly patching fist-sized holes in drywall.

I was terrified of losing my head when everything became too much, and everything had
been
too much for quite some time now. A new baby on the way. My teenager testing my patience from across a chilly divide I didn’t know how to bridge, a divide that had widened since he learned about his newest half-sibling. A longtime relationship that had sort of become a three-way thing and was now…it was…fuck, I didn’t know what was going on. I was in love with two people who couldn’t possibly understand that I felt the same for both of them, and I was furious with myself for letting it get to this point.

I took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. I had to face Isaac sooner or later. Angry at myself or not, I couldn’t just keep circling the block for however long it took to work this out. This wasn’t going to be quick or easy to sort out. Not even a little bit. It wasn’t like I could just walk away from her to preserve my relationship with him. Carmen was my closest friend, someone I didn’t want to lose, but even if I had to sacrifice our friendship to save my relationship, the baby meant we were part of each other’s lives now. All of us.

Which meant this was too fucking complicated for words.

Sighing, I finally turned and drove into our cul de sac. I pulled up in front of the house and put the car in park. For a moment, I just stared at the soft glow coming from the living room window, the faint light that said Isaac was probably still up. For the first time in I didn’t know how long, I wasn’t so sure I could face him.

But I had to. Sooner or later, I had to.

Sighing, I killed the engine and got out. At the front door, I squared my shoulders, whispered a silent prayer that Isaac could and would forgive me, and walked in.

As I took off my jacket in the kitchen, Isaac came in from the family room.

He set a mostly empty wine glass on the counter and kissed my cheek. “How did it go?”

From bad to worse to something I don’t think I can dig myself out of
. I swallowed. “Carmen’s parents. Take a guess.”

He grimaced. “That bad?”

I nodded, ignoring how dry my mouth had become. “They didn’t take it well.”

“So, what happened?”

I took her back to her place, slept with her like I should only be sleeping with you, and
— I cleared my throat. “I don’t think her parents like me anymore.”

He laughed dryly. “Not when they think you’re the guilty party who knocked up their daughter, no, I don’t imagine so.”

“Well, there is that…” I chewed my lip.

“Donovan, what did you do?” The playful accusation in his voice drew a quiet laugh out of me.

“I might have told her parents to get off her back.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” I leaned against the counter, folding my arms loosely across my chest. “Her mom outright called her a whore, and her dad jumped on Carmen for standing up for herself. So I—”
My woman
. I reached up to scratch the back of my neck, masking a shiver. “So I gently suggested they both pick their words a little better.”

“Gently?” Isaac chuckled. “By whose definition?”

“Well, maybe not by the most traditional definition…”

“You didn’t deck the man or anything, did you?”

“No.” I grinned. “See? Gentle.”

He laughed and rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh.” Then he rested his hands on the counter and cocked his head. “How is she doing?”

“She’s…okay.” My cheeks burned, and I doubted there was any point even trying to hide the color rushing into them. “I, um, made sure her night ended on a positive note, let’s put it that way.”

Isaac smiled. “Good, I’m sure she needed it.”

“Yeah.” I dropped my gaze. “She did.”

After a moment, he said, “You all right? You went quiet all of a sudden.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. Where to start? I was never great at finding the words to awkward, uncomfortable conversations. I didn’t have the extensive training or the innate gift Isaac had for knowing what to say and when, but I wondered if even he could figure this one out.

Then again, he probably wouldn’t have gotten himself this tangled up to begin with.

Maybe talking wasn’t the right approach. Not this minute, anyway.

I cleared my throat. “I think I could go for a shower.” With a great deal of effort, I met his eyes again. “Want to join me?”

His smile was alarmingly slow to form, the corners of his mouth hesitating to creep upward, but he did finally smile. “I’m always game for that.”

“You sure?” I asked, only half joking.

“Absolutely.” He pushed himself away from the counter. “You’re not too tired, are you?”

“Isaac,” I said, grinning, “I’m never too tired for you.”

The water had barely touched my skin before he was against me, and I kissed him like we hadn’t been near each other in months. I sought his tongue with my own, and he returned my kiss with equal desperation, pulling the breath right out of my lungs.

Hot water rushed over both of us but not between us. Our bodies were too close together, touching everywhere we could. My fingers grasped his soaked hair. His held my hips, keeping me against him so I could feel just how hard his cock was against my own.

He pushed me up against the wall, hot water still pouring over us as my skin made contact with the cool tile. He clasped my hands in his and pinned them to the wall beside my head—
just like Carmen did in bed, oh God
—and bent to kiss my neck.

His skin. Cold tile. Hot water.

Then his free hand slid between us, and I couldn’t even think when he closed his fingers around my cock.

“Jesus, Isaac, I…” His lips met mine before I could finish my thought, but the words didn’t matter. I couldn’t even remember how to kiss him now, let alone why I’d been worried he’d turn me away. All I knew was how much I loved the taste of his kiss and how good his hand felt stroking my cock.

Jesus, Isaac, don’t stop, that is so fucking—wait, why are you stopping
?

He broke the kiss, leaving me confused, disoriented, almost panicking, but only for the split second it took for him to drop to his knees in front of me. Just as I found the intense focus needed to draw a breath, his lips were around my cock, and I was completely at his mercy.

His lips and tongue moved slowly, gently, as if tasting every inch of my cock the way he’d done my kiss, and the sensation was so intense, my eyes welled up. My balance wavered and my fingers tightened their grasp on the shower door rail, though I couldn’t remember reaching for it in the first place.